One of the hardest things to do is to get capital. That's where we, as black business, struggles. And the other place we struggle is scale, and because we don't have an access to capital, we cannot scale.

Our forward track must focus on including everyone, embracing everyone, and celebrating the beauty - and normalcy - of everyone's differences.

You could say I was born into entrepreneurship. My grandmother, who was from Sierra Leone, was left to raise four children in the 1940s in a rural village in West Africa after becoming a young widow. To support her family, she made natural skin and hair care preparations and sold them primarily to missionaries and villagers.

There's something about 'Essence' that we more than like - that we really love: the history of the community, the forward-thinking leadership.